Chapter 12: The Stage

At seven on Saturday night, I walked up the stage steps in Blackridge town square.

My eyes had not gone back to brown since the truck. I kept them down, and I felt my wolf pacing under my ribs, awake and waiting.

My leg was in a brace, and I had a recording in my pocket.

Two hundred people stood in the cold below the lights.

Four sponsor banners hung across the stage.

The red LIVE badge on the big screen read sixty thousand.

Rafe stood at the foot of the steps with his arms crossed.

Dr. Lowry waited beside him with a folder under her arm.

Nobody stopped me.

Backstage, my mother had spotted me first.

"Ivy!" she said, bright and warm, and she opened her arms.

I stepped around her.

She laid a hand on my sleeve.

In her other palm I felt the cold edge of a glass tube.

"Honey, let me get your arm before the show," she said. "It will only take a second."

"Take your hand off me," I said.

It came away.

My father's voice came from the wings. "Ivy, this is not the place."

I did not turn around.

On stage, Cora knelt in her white robe with her hair loose.

She was pale and shaking, and her eyes found mine across the lights.

"Ivy," she mouthed.

I walked past her to the microphone stand and took it in both hands.

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